


Thesistuck

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College is all about the experiences, not just the end result. Like the time you see that Law student walking home in full LARP gear and can't quite get her out of your head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

College is more than just the end result, or at least that's what Dave tries to tell himself every time he looks at the amount of money he owes the government and catches himself praying to god or outer space horrors or whatever that his PhD makes him some kind of employable.

College is all about the experiences. Like the time he got drunk and woke up in a compromising position with one of Bro's creepy-ass puppets and he's like 99% sure that it was his then roommate who did it. It's the time spent explaining to Egbert over drinks exactly why you wish he'd stop inviting Serket over for games night. She is both creepy and probably a psychopath and Dave always spends the next day skipping TV channels half expecting to see her on America's Most Wanted or something.

Most of all, college is that day you see the hard as diamonds law student, the one who makes Franziska von Karma look like a pussy, walking back home from D&D club complete with magic staff and LARP outfit and somehow managing to smug as hell about it too. That, Dave always thinks, is probably where the whole sordid affair began.

It would be lying to call them friends and generous (really generous) to even call them acquaintances. At most, he's seen her around, somewhere between the physics building and the Department of Alternian Law, the two most distant parts of campus, probably because someone is afraid that if the two ever come into contact, someone will figure out a way to combine them and then the world is fucking doomed. The Cruellest Bar does not need access to large hadron colliders.

Dave wishes that they had a large hadron collider. All he has at the moment is a pack of instant noodles for dinner and a notebook full of theoretical mathematics which isn't half as glamorous.

But he's definitely seen her in passing, 'round a table at the greasiest food place in the union building, while Egbert tries desperately to convince himself that Serket's sweet nothings are totally not completely undisguised threats to eviscerate him and feed his entrails to the crows. Who the fuck knows, those might count as sweet nothings for undergrad Trolls.

He's just never really _noticed_ her 'til now, whip thin and spindly, like some horrible mantis, the street lamp casting her face into harsh shadows and patches of light which do nothing to soften the sharp angles which cut the light into slivers.

“You're staring,” she says, turning her blank eyed stare towards him with uncanny accuracy.

Anyone less chill might quail at a look like that from a girl like her, feel their balls shrivel up and die, but Dave just hikes his bag higher up his shoulder, shoves his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, and steps forward. “Most people would be honoured to be stared at by someone as cool as Dave Strider.”

She cackles, truly, swear-to-god cackles at that, like she's auditioning for the part of Wicked Witch of the Eastern Seaboard, and raises the staff like he's supposed to be afraid of something that looks like she's decapitated a muppet and stuck its head on a pike. “Most people are too worried about losing their eyes.”

He's almost certain that she's joking. Well, make that 90 percent sure. Her smile, all glittering teeth and black lips that would put a Great White to shame, makes him revise that down to eigh- okay, somewhere more than fifty percent at least. If it's a good day. If it's a bad day then thirty percent and she'll bring Serket along to help, and Dave kind of likes his internal organs in their proper human locations.

But because he is one suave fucker, her just smiles laconically, even as he feels his heart speed up from some twisted mix of adrenaline and terror. “Yeah? Guess they aren't chill enough to take looking at the hotness I'm seeing.”

Oh dear unmerciful terror-horrors. He really just said that didn't he?

Her eyes widen for a moment, then she grins and her gaping maw seems to suck in light like some particularly malevolent black hole. She sidles up to him and like a fool (albeit a particularly cool one), he doesn't start running , and by the time he thinks he should she has her muppet-staff hooked around the back of his neck, tugging him up against her. She's all sharp angles at this distance, elbows and ribs that should be registered as potential weapons. “And who's eyes do I happen to be searing?” He would love to claim that the words were purred, but in reality they curl around him like chainsaw buzz, raking claws down his spine.

But let it never be said that Dave Strider cannot keep his cool. He ducks his head, tilting down his glasses to show a flash fire sliver of his eyes. “Dave Strider, the coolest guy to ever set foot in the hallowed halls of this institution.” A modest introduction, because there is such a thing as overdoing it.

She peers at him, all intent, and he wonders if he's got something on his damn face. She inhales deeply, some freaky Troll greeting or maybe she's just trying to decide if he's worth eating and for the first time he wonders if perhaps skipping out on Alternian Culture 101 back as an undergrad had been such a good idea.

She pulls back and laughs that hideous laugh again, waving the staff around like the air has insulted her personally and needs to be punished. “A coolkid, hm?” she says. “Hello coolkid. I think your eyeballs would taste delicious with ketchup but I have to go and get real food. Goodbye.”

He's relieved enough that she doesn't seem to want to follow up on that threat (he hopes it a threat. He worries that it might be a compliment), that she's gone ten paces before he realises that his pocket is empty and she's _stolen his frigging ramen_!

“Hey!” he calls out, jogging over in her direction, because there are some things a man just should not stand for, even from a lady, and one of those is having your dinner filched by creepy alien chicks when that packet of delicious noodly e-numbers and salt was your only source of sustenance for the night.

Her pleasant smile makes him break out in a cold sweat. “Yes, coolkid?”

“Dave,” he repeats, because Coolkid is kind of uncool as a nickname. It's so obvious and... this totally wasn't what he'd come over to say. “You stole my ramen! I know I'm a perfect specimen of manhood but that's a pretty crappy way to show your undying lust.”

A blink, her smile widens and she licks black lips with her serpentine tongue. “You're right, Dave. It was a very bad way of showing that.”

He blinks furiously because he hadn't quite been expecting her to agree so readily, really takes the wind out of his sails, but nods dumbly. “Yeah, well.”

“Taking your wallet too would have been a much better idea!”

She slides away from him and is halfway down the path before he can even formulate a response, and it _bites_ man, really bites, and she still has his fucking dinner!

“If you're going to proposition me through larceny, you could at least give me a name!” He wants to be able to tell people exactly who to watch out for because 'that freaky Troll kid with the horns' doesn't exactly narrow it down much when that's half the student body.

A wave of that dumbass staff; she raises it above her head like she's going to start chanting some ridiculous ritual, and maybe it is but he's 99% almost sure that it's her name.

Terezi Pyrope.

Yeah, he can live with that.


	2. Chapter 2

He'll probably never see her again. The chances of bumping into anyone by accident twice are pretty damn slim. And that... that is just fine with him. See how fucking chill he is about it? Dave Strider does not give a damn 'bout some crazy alien chick who stole his dinner, never mind that he had to beg Egbert for a bag of fries from McGrease.

The Physics department computer lab is full of undergrads trying desperately to get their term papers written, poor naïve fools, too dumb to escape the hellish race that is college. He too had once been like them (albeit with more style, wit and grace than they could ever hope to aspire to,); believing that physics was all about smashing things together in tubes which could possibly destroy the world, or making things explode in interesting ways.

He misses the days when he got to do explosions instead of equations.

He's got a class to teach in an hour, so he kills time looking at the LolLusus site, the pictures of the freaky Alternian creatures with badly spelled captions really not doing anything to ease the queasy feeling in his stomach. Probably indigestion from the bad fries last night.

Or possibly stomach churning fear because _oh god_ there's a set of clawed fingers raking down his back in a manner that might be friendly but screams 'prey'.

“Hello coolkid,” Terezi Pyrope says, and flops down onto the chair next to him with all of the elegance of a crocodile dragging its prey beneath the murky water of some mosquito infested lake. He's never heard a voice with so many teeth in it.

He leans back in his chair and tilts down his sunglasses to peer at her. She's dressed conservatively today, or at least conservatively compared to some ceremonial wizard-beast LARP outfit; t-shirt and jeans and hell, she almost looks like she could pass for normal. “What brings you this far out?” he asks. “Don't you have papers to write?”

He'd call it a giggle if he didn't think that laugh could take most people in a fight. “The only test of a Legislacerator is their success,” she says, black lips pulled wide over white teeth. “How well I survive my first case will be the only measure of my fitness for the Bar.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Can't you just retake if you fail?” Everything that he knows about law has been gleaned from watching constant reruns of CSI on daytime TV when he really should be making progress on his dissertation.

She blinks at him and then laughs, more horrible than ever, throws her head back and cackles. “It's difficult to retake something when your entrails have been hung up from the courtroom beams as an example of what failure looks like.

He's actually fairly sure that she's being serious and he just stares for a moment, glad, for once, that he is only slave to the good ol' American justice system. “Huh,” he says, completely unimpressed, and she seems impressed by how unimpressed he is. Maybe.

There's silence for a moment, an awkward twisting thing that somehow she seems _entirely oblivious_ to, even though Dave's stomach is churning like he's just swallowed a nest of fire ants and they're in there, having a rocking fire ant party while they nuke the lining of his stomach, all 'yo! We're gonna make sure every slice of pizza is torment.'.

“So?” he says, not half as smooth as he'd like, but still an 8.5 for anyone else. “What brings you to the hallowed halls of the physics department? They took the death rays away from us after the unfortunate incident with the visiting Harvard professor and the drunk undergrad.”

“Ah yes,” she says, nodding sagely, “I remember it well.” And she's actually going along with it; most people just roll their eyes and occasionally attempt to psychoanalyse him. “The explosion has gone down in the annals and was referenced in the classic Alternian book 'How to commit truly conspicuous murder for fun and profit'.”

Dave nods, laying a hand over his heart. “The irony of the death ray not working but still fulfilling its intended function hits me right here. Gets me every time.”

“I declare a moment in honour of this undergraduate who dedicated his short life to the noble pursuit of mixing keggers with hard science,” Terezi says, and her expression is solemn for someone who has a perma-grin which could put The Joker to shame.

“Amen,” Dave says, totally heartfelt, because who hasn't, while drunk, considered hijacking a laser and recreating scenes from every sci-fi movie ever? (Never mind that Dave has been banned from watching bad sci-fi before his fourth vodka ever since he spent the night explaining to John in great detail why lasers don't work that way.)

“Enough remembrance,” Terezi declares, barely ten seconds later, and he thinks he sees why Trolls don't become funeral directors. Or have funerals.

“Right right,” Dave says, propping one knee up against the desk and peering at her over the tops of his shades. She's dwarfed by the chair, all spindly-limbed like something you'd find waiting in the bath to ambush you when you go for a shower at 3am and... no, he totally means spiders and not... fuck. “What _does_ bring you over here?” he asks. “I mean, I can totally understand not being able to get me out of your head.” Who would want to? “So if you want to throw yourself at my feet and bask in my glory you should feel free to start any time. The undergrads are used to it.”

She laughs, mouth wide in a grin that could skin a cat. “Maybe I just came to take your wallet. I do hate leaving jobs unfinished.”

He turns out his pockets, empty save for a few bits of lint and a couple of candy wrappers and a paper clip twisted by Jade into the shape of her devil dog's head. She'd said it was a good luck charm. It doesn't seem to deter Terezi. “Sorry,” he says, smirking, “I'm on bag lunches for now.” And that would be so much more awesome if he were some poverty stricken artist. Artists gain cred by having to live on cheese sandwiches and multi-pack bars of Snickers all lovingly packed by their inexplicably jovial roommates.

When you're a physicist it's just kind of sad.

“How exactly do you expect to take me to dinner then, if you are subsisting on cluckbeast between bread?”

Dave opens his mouth to retort, a retort so chill that it single-handed delays global warming by a century, and then his brain catches up with what he's just heard and he stares. He might even, although he will never admit this, gape.

 _Are you trying to seduce me, Ms Pyrope?_

The pause is perhaps a moment longer than is entirely cool, but he thinks that he recovers with appropriate grace and tips his shades down to peer at her, giving his most dashing smile. “Picnic beneath the stars, obviously.” Never let it be said that Dave Strider doesn't know how to make even abject student poverty into the smoothest of moves.

She chuckles, resting her chin on her hand and he isn't entirely sure how she manages to not injure herself with that thing. “Oh Dave, will you butter the bread and carve the cluckbeast yourself? My vascular organ is all aflutter.”

“I'll butter whatever the hell you want me to,” he replied with his most charming smile, never mind that inside he's wincing over the fact that those words ever left his mouth.

She regards him, and he can imagine her eyes behind those glasses, half-lidded and lazy, like a snake that's not quite hungry enough to try eating you yet. “Why Mr. Strider, I thought that you might at least wait until after the first date.”

He leans forward, sliding his shades down his nose, and the light kind of stings his eyes but its worth it to see the way the muscles around her eyes shift in surprise. “Me? I'm a perfect gentleman. People just can't handle how much of a goddamned gentleman I am and then there's ripped clothes and whipped cream and it's like of those deodorant commercials 'cept I'm not a high school drop-out who needs crappy body spray to show off how A-grade I am.”

She matches him move for move, leaning forward so they're nearly nose to nose, her breath on his lips like a clawed caress. “Oh no, coolkid,” she says, “I can see how A-grade you are behind your shades and too cool for school.”

The hairs rise on the back of his neck and its like staring down a mountain at the abyss below and he really

really

wants

to jump.

“Tonight?”

She grins, pulling away and suddenly that snake-spell is over and the room is filled with freshmen talking shitty TV and equations again. “At eight,” she says, pushing herself up in a move that isn't exactly graceful but makes you realise exactly how impressive it is that bones and sinew can work like they do. “Outside the Law building.”

“Don't come dressed as a freaky sorcerer!” he calls after her as she turns to walk away.

She waves without turning back. “Don't come dressed as a broke student and we have a deal!”

He watches as she leaves, sees a few of the Freshmen trembling in her wake.

Well fuck. He has approximately eight hours to find a suit.


End file.
